


His World

by Living_Underground



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s03e04 Coda, F/M, Internal Monologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 05:30:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11891025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Living_Underground/pseuds/Living_Underground
Summary: Morse's internal monologue at the end of Coda.





	His World

**Author's Note:**

> Oh. Hello. This is by no means my first fan fiction, though it is on AO3. It is also not my first Endeavour fiction, but it is the first that anybody but myself has seen. And, honestly, I was not even going to post it at all. Nor was I planning upon writing it, but that is life. 
> 
> The summary says it all, really. I feel like this is set either immediately after Joan's 'Dad won't understand', during that pause, or whether he is sat in the car, waiting for the inspector, thinking this, but it is one of the two.

_Look after them. Dad won’t understand._

He had wanted to shout, wanted to scream at her. _I don’t understand!_ How could he help her father if he himself could not grasp why she was leaving? He had gone there to tell her he loved her, or at least tell her something. He had gone there expecting her to smile at him, expecting her to tell him that it was about time he cottoned on. He had not expected to say goodbye. He had not expected to have to watch her walk away.

She meant the world. His world. Only he had not the strength to tell her as her eyes swam with fear and sadness and regret and anger and a longing to flee and every other emotion known to man, woman and child, the hazel irises flitting back and forth across his face, searching for something, perhaps even a reason to stay. Only he had not been able to provide her with it.

His argument had always been that he would not be good for her. He was cold and insensitive, half the time not knowing what she meant until he realised it hours, weeks, even years later. He was a cop, his life in danger at the worst of times and unreliable at the best of times. He spent more time in the office than standard working hours and the rest of his time he spent listening to Wagner and Puccini, drinking whiskey and pouring over crosswords. He was poor company at the best of times and he had never met anybody who could stand hours of being alone with him. He would only make her miserable.

He had always focused on the fact that she was his inspector’s daughter; in other words, off limits. And maybe Jakes had tried it once, and perhaps Thursday had given him a form of blessing once, but neither meant that it was okay. As bagman, he should not even be so closely acquainted with any of the Thursday family but the inspector – not with his young daughter, especially – and certainly not so close as to have had dinner with them on more than one occasion. Sam had said it himself: it usually took Thursday’s bagman six months of being on the job to build up the courage to knock on the door, and even then he hazarded a guess that they would insist on remaining on the doorstep. He certainly should not have been invited to the inspector’s wedding anniversary, and he should definitely not have flirted, more than once, with Miss Thursday, nor should he have ever entertained the thought of her in any way other than the daughter of his superior.

And yet, every time he looked at her he could have sworn that his pulse kicked it up a notch. His hands would grow clammy and breathing would suddenly become more of a chore. The first time he saw her he believed it just to be nerves; he had no idea what he was doing, whether he should have gone up to the door or waited in the car, and he was completely astounded that the door had been opened by a young woman and not the inspector, as he had anticipated. He then attributed his discomfort around her to his usual ineptness around women; despite frequently encountering female suspects, victims and witnesses, he was much more comfortable, and reliable, when interviewing men – he had always had a weakness for the damsel-in-distress, as had been pointed out on many an occasion. But then, as his experience grew, he began to run out of explanations: he never felt like this around Ms Frazil, or Monica, or Trewlove. More rarely around other women that he encountered through work, too. It was a feeling exclusive to Miss Thursday.

And the more frequently he saw her, the more effort he put into quashing his desires, the more energy he put into stifling his emotions. And the more he tried to deny how he felt, the more she seemed to get to him, the more work she seemed to put in to get him to see her.

The problem with that was, of course, that he could already see her. He could see what might have been pure desire or might have been something more. He could see her beauty and he could see her humour and her spirit. And the more he saw of her, the more he knew that he could not see her. Because he knew how much he would end up taking away from her. He knew that no good came from him – knew that he would end up disappointing her, taking her soul and her laughter and keeping it for himself, because that was what he did to everyone he loved, was it not? Did he not destroy everyone he cared for in the end? His mother, Susan, even Monica, to an extent.

So he had resisted. Focused more on work. Focused more on crosswords and books and opera. He had tried to put her out of his mind with Monica, but that had not worked, and seeing her smile sadly because she believed him to have found someone to be happy with only broke his resolve a little bit more. When he had walked her home after they had been thrown together by Strange and Maureen she had seemed so sad at the prospect of her…whatever it was being unrequited, and yet she had told him to buy Monica flowers, to apologise. He had not understood at the time, not understood how only moments before she had been flirting with him, possibly even trying to coerce him into the kiss under the porch light she had been joking about. But it had dawned upon him, as he sat through the night thinking about the day’s occurrences, that she had said it for the same reason he had acted in every way he had in the bank. She had said it because she could not live to see him hurt.

He would have taken every bullet fired just to keep her alive. He nearly did. And perhaps he could brush it off as doing his duty, he knew when he went out to work every day that if anyone were to die, it should always be him first, but somehow he never had to think about it with her. With Ronnie, there had been a moment of consideration, a moment when he thanked any deity present that it was not himself, but as soon as the barrel was aimed at her he was begging the aforementioned god to let them shoot him instead. He would have done anything to save her, nearly had, and, he realised as he sat there in the dark, that he always would have done, had it been any other time, any other situation that they were in. Hers was the first life he would save. She would always be the first to be seated in a lifeboat; always be the furthest away from the barrel of a gun, the blade of a knife. Her life was more important than any other. More important than her father’s, more important than any of his colleagues’. More important than his own. He would go to the ends of the earth to protect her.

But he could not summon the words to tell her. He had no way of articulating how he felt. He was unable to explain to her what she meant. To him. To his world. And maybe it was because he did not have the courage or the strength. Perhaps it was because he was trying to protect her, keep her away from his cold heart for fear that he would break her, destroy her and disappoint her. Or, possibly, it was because he could see how unhappy she was, and he did not know how to fix it, and the only way he could see her being happy again was to let her go.

Whatever his reasons, he knew, deep down, that he could not have told her. Not then. Maybe not ever.

_You mean the world to me._

**Author's Note:**

> So... how did I do?
> 
> I think it probably gets quite confusing somewhere in the middle, but in my mind it makes sense and I can follow it. 
> 
> And, of course, this is only my interpretation of what he was thinking during that last scene, so you are welcome to disagree with me entirely on that position. 
> 
> Constructive criticism is always welcome.


End file.
